The Perverse By Lawrence Martin

Terence Martin claims in his article “The Imagination at Play: Edgar Allan Poe” that Poe has set his imagination completely free, without care for the seriousness of American society. His literary work displays his fondness for play, which comes from his liberated imagination. Martin looks at Poe’s writings to demonstrate the freedom of his imagination. Moreover, he employs John Huizing's definition of play to support his argument that Poe loves to play when writing his stories.

Review of evidence: Terence Martin begins his article “The Imagination at Play: Edgar Allan Poe” by comparing Poe’s mindset toward imagination with that of Hawthorne, an American author. Despite Hawthorne's attempts to employ his imagination in creating his

Poe displays humans' urge to hurt themselves or others in many of his works, such as “The Black Cat”, “The Imp of the Perverse,” and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (203). In the “The Imp of the Perverse” for example, the narrator who murdered someone has the desire to confess his crime, an act that is considered perverse in the story (203). Poe's purpose for using perverseness in his stories, Martin claims, is to remove the barrier between the real world and the imagination (203). Perverseness helps readers escape the world they know and enter the free world of imagination. One example of Poe’s work that uses Perverseness for the said purpose is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. In the novel, Poe takes the reader on a dreadful journey in his imagination in which a group of people eats a person, an act considered immoral and horrifying to humans (204). After the person is eaten, things get back to normal and the readers return to the real world (204). Poe does use perverseness in many of his works as Martin claims, and the examples he provides are enough to show that. His use of perverseness not only reflects his wild, free imagination but helps him take the readers to the world of fantasy with him. The acts that are considered perverse by humans, such as cannibalism, can be committed in the imaginary world with no real consequences or effects on the real world. Poe’s using such acts in his work may reflect his desire to experiment in the world of the imagination with the readers. Thus, Martin's claim of Poe’s goal of using perverseness does not seem